A DIY motion-activated light

October 21, 2014

Transcript

If you're not around on Halloween to hand out candy first of all you're a horrible human being.
But the least you can do is keep a bowl of candy out for the local monsters.
To add some extra flare I'm gonna show you how to make it inexpensive interact some Halloween decoration that will light your candy bowl as people approach your house.
[MUSIC]
[INAUDIBLE] So here's what you're gonna need.
You're gonna need a motion activated floodlight.
Some colored bulbs to put in it.
The socket adapter.
And this is just, like, two, three bucks.
A box to mount it all on.
This is a deluxe $14 cracked tissue box.
It works perfect for this project, but you could probably go a lot cheaper.
You're gonna need a whole big candy bowl to put the whole thing in.
An extension cord, a couple screws.
Hopefully, you just have these around the house.
And, of course.
Lots of candy.
[NOISE]
So the first thing we're gonna want to do is to wire up our flood lights so that we can plug it into our extension cord.
Right now we're just dealing with bare wires.
So we're gonna use the socket adapter, we're gonna pop out the little blades.
And then wire up each blade to the bare wire.
And have this all ready to plug right in.
So I'm gonna thread the wire to the back of the adapter.
Pull it through.
Clamp it down.
Do the same thing with the other wire.
Good enough not to get electrocuted.
Place the blades back in the adapter.
Finally use this little wedge here to keep the wires separated, and no one gets hurt.
Alright, so now this $8 floodlight is a motion activated lamp.
To test it out, we're going to have to plug in our light bulbs.
I use these color changing LED bulbs, because one, they don't get hot like incandescent bulbs will, and also, they came with a little handy colored changing remote control.
So I can dial in exactly what spooky color I wanna use.
All right now it's time to mount the floodlight onto the box.
We're gonna do this for two reasons.
One, we want the extra stability the box is gonna give.
And a little platform to raise it up above the candy.
We're also gonna do this to conceal all the cables that are inside the box.
That we don't exactly want prying fingers to find.
All right, there we go.
We've got our nice light fixture here.
Got the cables inside concealed.
Now if we we're really doing this properly, we'd probably paint the box up, a nice black or orange color, to make it dramatically appropriate.
But for the sake of this demo, this is what you're getting.
Here we go.
I've got my bowl, I've got my light fixture in here.
First step is I'm going to plug it in to the extension cord.
Set it up, get it nice and centered.
Alright, now.
For the fun part.
Pouring in the candy.
Alright, come and get it kids.
Get the name brand candy, got the good stuff.
Alright, and then for the last part, let's adjust these lights down that they give the candy a good.
Spooky glow.
We're all set.
[MUSIC]
Okay, let's give this thing a shot, see if it works.
It works.
All right, so there you go, that's how to make your own monster-detecting candy illuminator.
A fun simple project and one that's affordable enough
[MUSIC]
You're not gonna mind if it gets stolen by vampires.